MEQUITTA AHUJA (1976 - )
Study for Afro Galaxy.

Graphite on tracing paper, 2008. 279x343 mm; 11x13½ inches.

Provenance: acquired directly from Bravinlee Programs, New York; private collection, New York (2008).

Afro Galaxy refers to a painting by the same title executed by the artist in 2007. Ahuja, describesAfrogalaxy as an “automythography collaborative.” She started the painting as a photographic self-portrait, but the work evolved into an enamel-on-paper diptych of the knowledge and power of the universe contained within the subject's mind and hair. The artist's practice is composed of an innovative approach to self-portraiture, investigating ideas of feminism, historical forms of painting, myth, and representation.

Ahuja earned a BA degree from Hampshire College in 1998 and an MFA from the University of Illinois. She was the recipient of the 2018 Guggenheim fellowship award. Her paintings have been exhibited internationally, most recently in Riffs and Relations: African American Artists and the European Modern Tradition at the Phillips Collection, Washington, DC. Her works are in many institutional collections including the Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, the Grand Rapids Art Museum, the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Studio Museum in Harlem, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. Crawford p. 14